Then another thought struck him. The Brungarians might be jamming the radio waves! If this kept up indefinitely, the door might never be opened from the exterior.
Tom tried using his own radio, but received no answer and assumed that the beams were not going through the hull of the rocket.
“This is serious,” Tom concluded. “Well, I’ll try to push the door sideways from in here.”
Switching on the battery light attached to his suit, Tom pried along the wall with his armored space gauntlets, seeking to locate the edge of the sliding panel.
But once again, the whole surface seemed smooth as glass! Tom was seized by a growing pang of alarm.
“Relax, boy, relax,” he told himself. “If this rocket opened once, it’ll open again.”
SECRET SYMBOLS 169
He continued his search. Still the secret of opening the panel manually eluded him. Inside his helmet, Tom could feel beads of sweat on his forehead.
He waited anxiously, thinking his friends surely would figure how to outwit the Brungarians if they were responsible for the trouble. Minutes went by, but there was nothing but deadly stillness.
In dismay, Tom clawed and hammered at the inner wall of the ark. The full peril of his position became fearfully clear.
He was a prisoner in a spaceship from a strange planet, full of diseased animals!
CHAPTER XX
MINIATURE MONSTERS
REALIZING that panic would only make his plight worse, Tom stopped his frantic pounding. As always, when in trouble, he asked himself, “What would Dad do in this situation?
“He’d try to collect his wits, that’s for sure!” Tom muttered ruefully. In a moment he felt calmer. “Now that I’m in here, I may as well take a look at those animals,” he decided.